Home > Article > Xiaodu smart speaker evaluation: why Baidu AI empowers smarter

Xiaodu smart speaker evaluation: why Baidu AI empowers smarter

The hottest product in 2018 must be the smart speaker. This landing product spawned by the powerful AI capabilities has attracted too much attention, but among the many players, Baidu undoubtedly took the lead. Baidu released on June 11 A self-owned brand of Xiaodu smart speakers, not only invited Cai Kangyong, who is known for his "high EQ and can talk," as the spokesperson, the initial pre-release price is as low as 89 yuan, and the editor has already smelled a burst of gunpowder. Taste, it seems that competition in this field is about to escalate again.

The editor also got this latest speaker, which focuses on good sound quality and has a unique child mode and geek mode. What is the difference between this smart speaker? Does it give consumers the desire to buy? Today, I will give netizens an experience evaluation of this Xiaodu smart speaker.

Exterior

In this age of justice, whether the appearance is good or not will directly determine the fate of the product. The white outer packaging box of the Xiaodu smart speaker is printed with the image of a cute Xiaodu robot, which is very cute and cute. After opening, the speaker is cylindrical in shape, with a rounded feel, and small and exquisite. It can be held with one hand. The main body is milky white, and the top and bottom are covered with a gray cloth mask. At the top are the physical buttons for playback, mute, and volume control, and in the middle is a bear's palm-shaped breathing light, which is extremely simple in design.

hardware

Although small, the Xiaodu smart speaker has not shrunk in hardware. The ARM Cortex A53 quad-core processor has low power consumption and high integration, which can better handle voice recognition and respond to voice commands. High-sensitivity ring microphone design, with active noise reduction, beamforming and far and near field pickup technology, easy voice wake-up within 5 meters. The sound system is equipped with a 1.75-inch high-sensitivity full-frequency neodymium iron internal magnetic horn with a rated impedance of 6 ohms and a maximum output power of more than 5W. With a new sound wave reflection cone design, it can achieve a 360° non-dead-angle listening experience. . In addition to supporting WiFi, it also supports Bluetooth V4.2 Bluetooth protocol, which can not only interact with Xiaodu speakers on the network, but also directly play mobile content through mobile Bluetooth.

The most commendable aspect of the hardware is the sound quality of the Xiaodu smart speaker, because the neodymium iron internal magnetic speaker is used, which has high sensitivity, low distortion, and the sound is very mellow and pleasant.

Interactive Experience

Turn on the power, Xiaodu smart speakers will start, follow the instructions to download the APP and connect to the network, call Xiaodu Xiaodu can start the intelligent experience, Xiaodu's intelligence comes from the equipped Baidu conversational artificial intelligence operating system DuerOS There are already too many such products for basic audio interaction, such as listening to songs, timing, and Q&A, so I won’t go into details here. On the one hand, DuerOS’s unique charm is that it supports 400+ life skills, basically covering most of the daily life scenes, and can become your daily assistant; on the other hand, the biggest advantage of current smart speakers lies in their Rich content, this is precisely Baidu's biggest advantage. Encyclopedia, Knowing, Koala, Nutshell, Crosstalk, and various open classes are rich enough for you to learn with your ears.

However, there is a small feature worthy of praise. In addition to recording the communication process between you and Xiaodu's smart speaker, you can customize the secret language in the dialogue option. You can set the specified question and then set the specified answer for Xiaodu or The designated response command, this small function can create some warm scenes for children or family members, and create some small romance between couples, which is very interesting.

Child mode

In fact, in the communication between the editor and many people, everyone feels that the product category of smart speakers is now more gimmick than practical, and most functions are not used much, or it takes a process of adaptation from text Baidu to voice. There are also many searches. Voice interaction cannot meet the demand. The editor believes that the reason for this feeling is that although the current artificial intelligence has made great progress, the level of development has indeed not achieved the level of intelligence we hope to achieve.

However, many families with children like this product very much. The children are more curious about smart speakers, not only using it, but also chatting with Xiaodu. So I think that artificial intelligence is a technology for the next generation, and children are more comfortable with such products since they are young. At present, the number of active devices equipped with DuerOS has exceeded 87 million, and the number of monthly active devices has exceeded 21.4 million. Baidu has also found this characteristic in such a huge demand. Therefore, the Xiaodu smart speaker has launched a child mode for children. In the child mode, the Xiaodu smart speaker will affectionately call the user "baby", and the tone, tone, and wording of the user will be changed. And the same sentence, if it is said in the standard mode, is completely another tone and wording.

The world in the eyes of children is different from the world in the eyes of adults. They will have many questions. Adults may not have the energy to answer children’s endless questions one by one due to many reasons such as work and life pressures. If they do not answer It will hurt the child's curiosity again, but the situation becomes different after Xiaodu. Children can explore and solve problems by themselves through question and answer with Xiaodu. In the search scenario, Baidu has also done special treatment for children, filtering sensitive and unhealthy information from technical means to give children a more pure environment.

In addition, a large number of high-quality fairy tales, ancient poems, nursery rhymes, educational games and other resources suitable for children's growth are also selected for children.

Geek mode

The most dissatisfied with the previous smart speaker products is that I can wake up frequently to have some multi-round conversations, which makes the interactive experience very poor. Xiaodu smart speakers have also made changes for such a group of people. In guest mode, you can enter this mode by giving a voice command to the speaker to activate the geek mode. In this mode, you can complete a continuous conversation with the speaker without repeatedly waking up. For example, Xiaodu Xiaodu-I want to listen to Li Jian's song-change it-a louder voice, a complete experience closer to communicating with people.

Summary: The success of each product must be inseparable from its precise market positioning. In addition to providing adults with a large number of music and audiobooks, smart speakers must also belong to the next generation of artificial intelligence technology that represents the direction of the future. Artificial intelligence for the indigenous people, the child model for children and the geek model for technology enthusiasts, respectively meet the needs of different groups of people, avoid some of the embarrassing problems of artificial intelligence technology at this stage, and are more targeted. In particular, the current ultra-low price makes this smart speaker more cost-effective, so you might as well start with one and get ready to enter a new era of intelligence.